41–50 of 135 posts
Try doing the easiest things first. That motivates you to do the next and the one after that. It also helps get you into some rhythm
Also, Try taking a break :). It helps
1. There is something else which is pre-occupying your subconscious mind. Probably something which you are trying to sideline as not a big deal, but subconsciously it is a big deal. Find out what that is and take care of it head-on. This will fix itself after that.
2. You might not see yourself being 'successfull' in this job over a longer term. For example, you want to do a startup and even though you need this job for the money, you still understand that your longer term interests are better served by quitting right now and doing a startup. It could be something else but essentialy what could be happenning is that your subconsious realizes that you doing this work is not getting you any closer to your longer term goals and hence it is revolting.
Do not seek to change yourself or your circumstances right now. Only seek to understand yourself - once you have done that these things will go away by themselves.
I think it's a common pattern, only perhaps the magnitude is worse in your case. I observed it on myself as well on other programmers back when doing a project management stint. What helps me personally is having a notepad where I jolt down TODO items, to the most atomic level if possible. To give an idea what's on it here now: - probe for activity on the I2C bus - find the SIGCHLD problem - remove rectangle in the l…
When you know you need to "add feature X", what do you do? Write "itemize feature X" on your list, and then, when you come to it, sit there and think of a list of things to replace it with?
And forget about this ADD crap. You are absolutely normal living thinking person.
several strategies that have worked for me: 1. get yourself checked out for ADD. I'm not saying this is the problem, but it's easy to check for, and if it is the problem, there are drugs that can at least temporarily make the problem just go away. Now if this is something you've never experienced until just now, it's probably not ADD. But if you've had these sorts of problems on and off forever, (I know for me, my pe…
I found that morning meetings with the other devs on the project, where we are all publicly assigned stories to complete in the day also helps - you don't want the rest of the team feeling like you're slacking off, so you push on through the distractions. But of course, you need the whole team to be on board, and indeed, you need a team!
As I often work alone, the Agile methodology that helps me the most is TDD. It helps me keep focused on what I need to do next. Conceptually it's similar to a TODO list, as suggested in other posts, but it has the advantage that you can't allow the tool itself to be a distraction (I've tried TODO lists, and I end up playing more with the list than with the work). With TDD, either you're writing tests, or you're writing the product code, but either way you are creating an artifact that is useful to the project.
Why did you post this on a throwaway account? Are you afraid that HN will think less of you if you posted on your real account? Not trying to be critical - these are honest questions here.